Where Cloud Is Ground: Placing Data and Making Place in IcelandWhere Cloud Is Ground offers an ethnography of the international data storage industry and an inquiry into the relationship between data and place. Based in Iceland, which is fast becoming a hot spot for data centers—facilities where large quantities of data are processed and stored—the book traces the fraught work of siting data’s material manifestations in relation to landforms and earth processes, local politics, national narratives, and still-open questions of spatial justice and sovereignty. Doing so, it unsettles techno-utopian ideals of connectivity and offers a window into what it means to live with our data, in a place where more and more data now lives. |
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Aaron aluminum American Arctera argued Ásbrú Big Bitcoin Heist Birgitta Bitcoin Blönduós building built cables chapter colonial computational connectivity cryptocurrency mining cultural data center development data center industry data hall data haven data storage data storage industry data’s Davíð Oddsson described Duke University Duke University Press Durrenberger efforts Egill emerged energy environment eruption ethnography example Eyjafjallajökull Facebook facility financial crisis Geir Gísli Pálsson global Greenpeace Höfn Hornafjörður hydropower Iceland booth Icelandic data Icelandic landscape IMMI IMMI’s information management infrastructure Ingó inside interlocutors island Keflavík kind Landsvirkjun living Loftsdóttir marginality Mateo military municipal narrative NASKEF nature networks on-the-way operations Parliament placing data political question Reyðarfjörður Reykjanes Peninsula Reykjanes residents Reykjanesbær Reykjavík secrecy server farm shift Smári Snæbjörn social space spatial Stefán stored tax havens tion told town Valdimar volcano West Fjords WikiLeaks World Hosting Days